How to Lie using Facts

In the context of a book review, Time's Lev Grossman provides some insight into how to mislead using facts:

I say appears because as vivid and visceral as Human Smoke [italics mine (! -- when did they stop italicizing book titles)] is, it has a maddeningly slippery quality. In presenting bare facts unadorned by any commentary, Human Smoke [ditto] cloaks itself in an aura of limpid, virtuous purity. But beneath that cloak, things get a little murky because in presenting the facts as he does, Baker is making an argument that he doesn't explicitly state. Does he really believe--as he seems to--that aerial bombing is on a moral continuum with Nazi genocide? And that Adolf Hitler's hatred of Jews is comparable to Churchill's hatred of the Germans and Japanese? (We get Mrs. Churchill calling them "Nazi hogs" and "yellow Japanese lice" in a letter?) Or that the world would be a better place if--delirious fantasy--Europe had met German aggression with nonviolent resistance? I mean, if you're going to strongly imply that England should have made peace with Hitler, you might as well just come out and say it.

It's hard to argue with somebody who won't argue. It's almost like there's an unspoken analogy at work between Gandhi's nonviolence and Baker's noncommentary: Baker declines to take up arms in support of his thesis, as if to do so would be to commit rhetorical violence against the facts. But facts, even tragic ones, require context and interpretation. They don't speak for themselves. That's why we need historians.

I would add, that is also why we need journalists. News media are not doing themselves a favor by pretending a story can have an angle without having a slant. Their job is not merely to regurgitate just the facts, they also need to provide context and interpretation.